Cyclone ‘Hudhud’ has now strengthened into a very severe cyclonic storm and is fast approaching the eastern coast. Andhra Pradesh and Odisha are on high alert for the cyclone that will make a landfall on Sunday at noon.
Villages along the Visakhapatnam coast are being evacuated from morning. The MET department predicts a storm surge from the sea will inundate low-lying areas of north coastal Andhra Pradesh at the time of landfall, says GP Sharma, Vice President, Meteorology, Skymet Weather Services in an interview with CNBC-TV18’s Nigel D’souza.
The MET department says the cyclone will pack in wind speeds of up to 140 kilometres per hour when it makes landfall - extensive damage to homes, uprooting of trees, disruption of power and communication lines is likely. Disaster response forces and the army and navy are on standby.
Below is the edited transcript of the interview:
Q: How are you reading the whole thing? Our correspondent says there is going to be a cyclone; it is going to be followed by a big flood as well so could you take our viewers through how are you reading this ongoing situation?
A: As we see this cyclone, it has been gaining strength gradually since day before yesterday. Yesterday it became a very severe cyclone. To tell you very severe cyclone, storm has got a wide range of wind speed. It varies anything between about 120 to about 220 km/hour. This cyclone has already clocked 130 km yesterday, that was the speed and it is gathering momentum further. So my estimates are the wind speed could be much higher. Probably even near the costal areas it will have anything in excess of about 180 kms/hr. As it makes a landfall anything gusting up to about 180-190 kms/hr will be absolutely in place. Therefore, the devastating potential of this particular storm is very high and we need to take all the cautions.
Q: When exactly did we see something so severe on that coast?
A: The coast last year we had the Phailin, which was incidentally on the same date on October 12. The only difference is last year it made a landfall at Gopalpur, this time we expect it to be somewhere closer to Visakhapatnam. That is the difference and obviously Phailin was a little stronger but then all these storms, anything in excess of 150 km/hr will create chaos and is capable of having lot of damage to the infrastructure, to the property. Thanks to the authorities that we had the advance notice, evacuation is in place and I believe, over four lakh people have already been evacuated.
Over a period of time, we have experienced these storms, a number of storms rather in addition to last when we had Phailin, last year itself we have had four storms which formed in the seas. Three of which had become very serious cyclonic storms. It was also followed by another severe cyclonic storm Helen. So we have seen these storms more than once during last year and therefore, we have improved in tackling these systems as such. Causality figures I am sure with all these advance notice that we have, it should be aiming towards zero causality.
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